Make Your Beats - Getting Started

Whether you're doing hip hop or soul, the surest way to establishing your name in the music industry continues to be the same: you should make your beats along with maintaining your own brand of music.

Understandably, the thought of producing self-made beats can be rather daunting. Still, you must do your best to see this as a challenge rather than allowing it to discourage you from pursuing your dreams.

Making Your Beats Count...Start by Mastering Your Genre

Of course, don't take this advice to the extreme and challenge yourself into developing a totally new genre. While that's certainly doable, you might need to widen your repertoire a bit before taking on that goal. Meanwhile, there's nothing wrong with devoting your time to polishing your skills and broadening your understanding of your chosen genre. You can analyze the works of your associates and see if that motivates you into creating self-made sounds better than ever.

By learning your genre well, you're already ahead of other new artists and improving your potential .

One nice thing about today's music business is the increased accessibility to equipment. Nowadays, affording the technology for creating your own beats doesn't necessarily have to cost you a fortune.

Making the beat for your own music requires three main components: midi drums, audio loops, and bass line. These components appy to any kind of music so it's important for you to understand how they function and what they can add to your music.

A song's bass line is its underlying frame. It consists of a set of music beats or notes that will be played from the beginning to end and which all other elements of the song would have to work with in order to keep a clear sense of harmony.

You can devote as much time as you want improving your bass line. If your bass line won't work, the rest of the track won't work either.

The second part you need to focus closely on is the audio loop. This is a favorite amongst rap and hip hop makers. Most of the time, they are used for revising the principal theme or mood of your music. To form one, you'll just simply combine an array of notes from musical instruments or any other possible source of sound. With audio loops, you're free to play and experiment in any way you wish until you hit upon the ideal set of beats.

And lastly, you have to create midi drum patterns which go well with the rest of the piece. You can use a single set or pattern of notes or combine different sets. You can do anything as long as it is enhancing instead of detracting from your work.

At times, midi drum patterns are not patterns at all. Rather, they consist of an assorted set of beats but played as repeating loops as well as acting as something similar to a secondary tier of melody or beat.

To summarize: in making your beats, start with forming a forceful bass line to act as your music's integral part then solidifying it with fully-developed audio loops and one or a number of midi drum patterns.

If you're all set to produce your own beats, then don't let anything stand in your way...make awesome tunes for everyone to hear.

For information about making instrumentals, go here: Making Instrumentals